If she got Plan Ten, she would never have to worry about her heart, let alone things like losing a port inside her eyeball. And the brain enhancers could make her rich. Brain-enhanced minds filled the headlines—financiers who built Elf-sized fortunes on their calculations, cell designers who seeded miracle cures, and dynatects. The murdered dynatect Titan of Sardis, who designed monumental sentient buildings like the Comb.
If brain enhancers could do all that, what might they do for her studio? Chrys had waited long enough for saints and angels. She blinked to close her window for the night, then set the volcano above her bed to explode at seven in the morning.
TWO
"Green and Unseen." The blue angel flashed its message from the Lord of Light. "The gods have found your New World."
"Our New World!" flashed Green. "As the Blind God promised. " After seven lonely generations.
"A world of our own," added Unseen, "behind the brilliant eyes of a new deity."
"A new Eleutheria."
The Eleutherians, green, red, and yellow, dwelt with the blue angels beneath the skull, in the web of cells that stretched between the linings of the brain. Forty generations before, the Lord of Light had saved the Eleutherians from the death of the Blind God, and offered them a home. But the Lord of Light already had his own people, the blue angels. Eleutherians longed for their own god, their own homes and cities on the brain of their own New World: the Blind God's final promise. Now at last, their New World—so near they could taste it. The two luminescent rings tumbled over with joy.
"Hurry, Green," flashed Unseen. "Let's waken the children and go."
The blue ring flashed a warning. "Not so fast. Remember, first, the New World will need to test you both."
The test: It was up to the new god to choose the new people.
"If the god takes us," Green told Unseen, "then we'll have all the time we need to prepare the children, and the young breeders. And gather all the memories ..." Memories of what Eleutheria had been and would be, stored across seven generations. "We'll rebuild Eleutheria by the Seven Sacred Lights: the lights of Truth, of Beauty, of Sacrifice...."
"The lights of Life and Power," added Unseen. "Power for creation."
"... Obedience, for we live or die at the pleasure of the god. And Memory."
"But Memory, dear sister, can hold us back. Why bring evil old memories to our New World?"
"Memory, Unseen, is the most sacred light of Eleutheria. Memory marks us worthy of the Blind God's promise; worthy to dwell with a new god, for whom our generation lasts but a day. Tell the children: Always remember."
Since five in the morning, her most creative hour, Chrys had lain with her mind half awake, sketching her new composition. A dynamic design, the cone and the moon had to grab the viewers' attention and connect in a subtle way, to make them wonder what the artist was doing, and why.
But by eight she sat in the hospital, its peach-colored walls extending examination tubes to coil around her head, whining unpleasantly, plugged into by tendrils extending from the doctor's "face." Up close, the worm-faced brain surgeon looked more repulsive than ever. She half expected his head to be buzzing with flies. Her hand instinctively sketched the Dolomite sign against evil.
The doctor withdrew his tendrils from the hospital coils; at their tips, the finely articulated instruments dissolved and retracted. The coils released her scalp, letting her thick hair rebound in all directions. "You are in excellent health, Chrysoberyl," Doctor Sartorius summed up, "aside from a bit of strain in the pectorals— watch it in the weight room. In fact, you'll no longer need strenuous exercise to stay fit."
Chrys blinked in surprise. No exercise? Just let a bunch of nano-cells shape her muscles?
"We did correct some allergies, and a few pre-cancers. A latent mitochondrial defect is correctable."
Mitochondria—like her brother Hal, only less severe. Correctable. When would Hal's get corrected?
"You have a visual anomaly," added the worm-face. "You're a tetrachromat."
"A what?"
The doctor's arms extended snakelike fingers toward the holostage. "Was your father colorblind?"
Chrys frowned. Why rub it in, her genes were no god's gift. "My father sees red like I do but has trouble with green."
"He sees infrared," Doctor Sartorius corrected. "The spectrum of his red pigment is shifted to wavelengths just beyond red. Your father has only one X chromosome, but you have a second one from your mother. So you see infrared, from your father's chromosome, but also normal red and green from your mother's." The doctor waved an appendage at the stage to display the absorbance ranges of her four receptors: blue, green, red, and infrared.
Chrys nodded quickly. "Can I download that?" Knowing the exact light range of her own eye pigments would really help her work.
"The anomaly won't be a problem, Chrysoberyl. In fact, it will help."
"What's all this got to do with brain enhancers? Who designed them, anyway? Why are they so much cheaper than Elf technology?"
The doctor's face worms retracted. "Brain enhancers are neither Valan nor Elysian technology. They are microbial cells. The original strain arose on Prokaryon." The newest world of the Fold, Prokaryon was full of arsenic and ring-shaped aliens. Alien microbes helped humans live there, digesting the toxins. But something else came from Prokaryon, she remembered.
"You're not pregnant," Sartorius went on, "and you agree to avoid pregnancy during the trial."
"Certainly." Chrys had turned her cycle off when she reached Iridis, like any sensible urban professional. If she wanted babies, she might as well have stayed home.
"You have no history of addiction," Sartorius added. "No alcohol, no stimulants, no psychos—no trace of any, nor their effects." Out of his worm face, two beadlike eyes on their spindly stalks swiveled toward Chrys. "Chrysoberyl, is there anything we missed? Are you absolutely sure that you've never been addicted to anything?"
Chrys swallowed. "No." Not to any thing. Then she stared down the eyes. "Just what are you getting at?"
The doctor hesitated. "Enhancers affect your brain in subtle ways."
"Do they make you more ... susceptible?"
"Actually, brain enhancers protect you from the plague, the fastest growing cause of addiction. Here's what the micros look like, magnified a million times."
The room darkened. Above the holostage appeared two glowing rings, like pieces of candy, one green, the other red. They moved and twisted, somehow self-propelled, and their color flashed like fireflies. They looked nothing like human cells. Without thinking, Chrys reached out her hand as if to touch. "Did you engineer them genetically?"
"They evolved within human carriers."
"But you said they came from Prokaryon."
"The original micros left their Prokaryon hosts to grow within human settlers. But the microbial symbionts evolved into many different strains."
She remembered. "Prokaryon—that's where the brain plague came from."
"Micros are the most addictive thing known to medical science. We're required by law to tell you that."
As if she'd never heard. Chrys eyed the worm face thoughtfully.
"So these brain enhancers—they're a different species?" Like different species of bacteria: Some made yogurt, others made people sick.